Starlight
by froglady15
Summary: A one-shot based on my drabble responses to the We're Just Saiyan Community October BVDN. Vegeta returns to Bulma the night before the androids. I may or may not add to it in the future...


_**Disclaimer:**_ I don't own anything. Just my Husband, laptop, my 3 dogs and a very overactive imagination… Dragon Ball Z and any songs mentioned in this fic DO NOT belong to me. I'm just borrowing them for my own twisted amusement.

 _ **October BVDN responses**_

This is a one shot I put together using 5 prompts from the October Bulma & Vegeta Drabble Night. We were given 5 picture prompts and each one was to be 400 words long and we had 40 minutes to complete them. At first I wasn't sure what to do with them, as I cannot post the pictures to illustrate what inspired which prompt. So I rearranged them and made a one shot out of the whole thing.

The theme was Silhouette and this one shot is set in the very early morning hours before the Androids attacked.

Enjoy! :D

 _ **Starlight**_

 _ **Prompt 2**_

Bulma Briefs was never alone, she always had someone with her. Ever since she had started out on that first adventure when she was 16 years old, she had never been alone. She had made friends and surrounded herself with only the strongest and amazing people.

Never was she alone.

Even after Vegeta left her to train in space, she was never alone; not _really_. She had her parents and her work duties at the lab. While she and Yamcha had split up their romantic relationship amicably and he was still a good friend and frequent companion that she liked to spend time with, even after Vegeta had left, she was technically never alone.

But she was.

She never felt more alone than after he had left. She wasn't sure what his brief presence in her life had done to her but it had shattered her once he had left. She understood and respected his reasons; she was the only one rooting for him to achieve his goal. She understood that he had needed to go, needed to distance himself from her and everything that had happened in order to do that.

She'd told herself she was okay, that his leaving hadn't affected her, but that was the brave outward front she had put on for everyone else to see so she wouldn't have to deal with the sympathetic looks and "I told you so" comments from some of the other Z warriors who had disagreed with her housing Vegeta in her home to begin with.

During the day she was usually alright; it was at night she felt it the most. She dreamed of him nearly every night. It was always the same; they were standing together in in the open in the park during the spring when the cherry blossom trees were in full bloom. They were beautiful, setting a serene, peaceful setting.

Bulma would always find herself admiring them as she and Vegeta silently walked together, hand in hand. It was perfect until he would let her hand go and suddenly take off wordlessly, leaving her there all alone. She would stand there in vain, waiting for him to return to her; surely he would come back soon.

She would stand there until dusk waiting and waiting, wondering why he hadn't returned for her and just before she sank into deep despair at the feeling of abandonment, she would wake up.

Alone again.

 _ **Prompt 1**_

Right then, Bulma was awakened by a cool breeze, lightly kissing her skin. Her eyes fluttered open in confusion from the unsettling dream despite it being a regular occurrence and she frowned in puzzlement as the curtains gently billowed into her room; she was certain she had closed the doors before settling in for the night.

She got out of bed to close the door, glancing outside briefly; the sun was just starting to come up. It was then that she noticed that she had a visitor on her balcony. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw him standing there silently, regally like a statue and wondered if he was actually there, mere feet in front of her, or if it was another one of her dreams, wishing and hoping that he had returned to her, or _them_.

No, she told herself, he was there; in the flesh.

Bulma hung back several feet away from him, taking cover behind the sliding door of her balcony and simply observed him as he stood at the end, silently looking out towards the horizon. The pink, purple and orange hues of the sunset outlining his figure perfectly, revealing only a black silhouette of the alien man before her.

Taking in his short, lean, black stature under the starlight, she was reminded once more that he was not of this world and despite the last few years he had resided here on this planet with her and her family, he was still a complete mystery to her.

She knew that he knew that she was there; his head turned somewhat to the side, silently acknowledging her silent presence. When he didn't say anything to her, she took that as him not minding that she was there.

After a few moment's deliberation, she decided to be brave and approach him. Carefully and quietly she walked up to him, deciding what to say or do. She desperately wanted to embrace him and feel his strong body against hers but it had been almost a year since she had seen him, would it be inappropriate? Would he welcome her or spurn her? She wasn't sure.

Finally, she settled on placing a light hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. As always, she felt an almost magnetic electric current flow between them whenever they made any kind of physical contact, no matter how innocent.

He didn't say anything, nor did he turn away from her.

 _ **Prompt 3**_

He remained there without speaking a word to her for several minutes, continuing to look at the sky, neither acknowledging her nor ignoring her.

As the moments passed and she stood there with her hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, she took his silence as a good sign and leaned into him finally; wrapping her arms around his lean waist and pressing her cheek into his shoulder.

She felt him sigh and she wondered if it was in annoyance at her overt display of affection or relief that she wasn't screaming her head off at him for leaving her alone all this time without so much of a word of whether or not her would return to help them.

While a part of her wanted to do that, a small part of her had never lost faith in him; he may not be reformed, but he still had some code of honor. He had said he would help them defeat the androids and she knew he would keep his word on that. If for no other reason to satiate his need for battle and boast his new abilities to the others.

Several long moments passed before he turned his head to the side to look at her; his hands still bracing the raining in front of him in indecision. He wasn't quite sure why he returned to her home, or to _her_. He owed her nothing and yet still he had felt this overwhelming desire to see her.

He relented somewhat and brought an arm around her waist, bringing her close to him, grabbing her securely before suddenly catapulting himself into the air.

Bulma resisted the urge to scream at this sudden action; this was not what she'd had in mind, but she wrapped her arms tightly around him and buried her face into the crook of his neck, relishing in the feeling of being in his arms.

He landed somewhere in the wilderness on top of a high mountain before setting her down carefully. She looked in awe at the sight before her; wherever he had taken her, there were no street lights and lamps. It was completely dark and you could still see the stars even though the sun was rising. The purples and indigos took her breath away.

She realized she was still holding his hand as she marveled at the scene before her.

 _ **Prompt 4**_

Bulma pulled him closer to her, still looking at the beautiful sky. She couldn't remember the last time she took the time to just sit back and enjoy the natural beauty of the planet she called _home_. She had been so wrapped up with her pregnancy and birth of Trunks and worries about the Androids and whether or not Vegeta would return to help them. What if the Androids succeeded and destroyed everyone and everything after today? Then what? Had she taken it all for granted?

Vegeta stood silently beside her, marveling to himself at the serene scene before them. He still had yet to speak a word to her; he wasn't even sure what he wanted to say to her and was content that it was one of the few times he'd been with her and she was quiet, that was a rarity. The woman always had lots to say.

She shivered as she looked up at the sky and the endless numbers of stars that were there and she felt him move closer to her, the heat radiating from his body warming her instantly.

Vegeta suddenly pointed at a cluster of stars, "Vegeta-sei was somewhere over there, in that district."

Bulma nodded and looked where he'd pointed, smiling to herself; never had Vegeta revealed anything personal about himself to her. "How many other planets have you visited?"

He shrugged and was about to reply when they noticed two planes shooting across the sky, ruining the peaceful setting before them.

"Did you go and visit any of those planet up there while you were gone?"

"Hmmn," he nodded, pointing to a large star somewhat separate from a large cluster. "That one I stopped at briefly to restock the ship with food and other amenities."

"Wow," she sighed, genuinely in wonder that the universe was populated all over just like it was here on her home planet.

"I landed the ship on a dead planet with a most unforgiving atmosphere somewhere over there," he said as he pointed to another cluster of planets.

"Unforgiving?" she asked.

"Desolate, windy, cold, devoid of any life or vegetation whatsoever," he confirmed.

"Why?"

"It was the ideal place to train," he answered. "And it was shortly after that, that I broke the barrier and achieved what I thought impossible."

"You ascended?"

"Hmmn," he nodded once, cryptically.

"I knew you would," she said confidently, turning to look at him in admiration.

 _ **Prompt 5**_

"That one is one that I purged," he said quietly, pointing to another star. It was said more as a matter of fact; there was no pride or remorse in his tone.

"It's still there?" she asked. "I thought when you purged a planet that meant you destroyed it."

"Not always," he shrugged. "Sometimes we destroyed, sometimes we wiped all living lifeforms from it so that a new race could purchase it and populate it with their own. It depended."

"On what?" she asked, not sure if she wanted to know or not.

He shrugged again uncomfortable now with this line of conversation, wondering why he'd even said that to begin with. He very rarely talked about his time in the PTO under Frieza's rule. "What he wanted. Sometimes he had a buyer if it was a desirable planet, like this one,"

Bulma physically shuddered at the thought.

"Sometimes if a planet owed him too much money and didn't pay back their debts to him in a manner which he felt was reasonable, he would send a team to destroy the planet and its inhabitants altogether just to make an example of them as a warning to others who were behind in their payments," he replied in a near monotone. "It largely depended on what kind of mood he was at the time; whether he was feeling charitable or not."

"Nice guy," Bulma said sarcastically.

"Hmmn," he nodded in agreement.

"I always meant to ask you," she started cautiously.

"What?" he asked, unsure if he wanted to know and unsure why he had even started on this line of conversation.

"Where did you go when you went searching for Goku?" She asked, thinking that was a much lighter topic of discussion.

Vegeta visibly winced; it was hard to see because it was so dark; the only light coming from the moon and stars from above, giving him an almost ethereal glow and look to him. "I did not leave to _only_ search for Kakarott," he admitted, still refusing to call him by his Earth name.

"Okay," Bulma nodded. "So what did you do? Where did you go?"

"I destroyed all that was left of Frieza's empire on this side of the galaxy," he admitted. "Not a story you would like to hear, I am sure."

"Why?"

Vegeta turned and looked at her. "Because there is nothing to tell except for revenge, malice, death and destruction," he said almost bitterly. "It is what I do best, is it not?"

Bulma wasn't sure what to say or how to reply to him. While it didn't surprise her that he would resort to such a thing, it didn't mean she wanted to think that he was capable of it. The man she knew was so different from the man she didn't know and it frightened her to think that they were the same man if she thought about it for too long.

Instead of shrinking back from him in fear or revulsion as he half expected her to, she stepped in front of him, cupped the side of his cheek and looked him in the eye. "Not anymore, Vegeta," she said with such conviction that he could almost believe it himself. "Not anymore."

-0-0-0-

I may or may not add to this… I have my own head cannon of what went on the night before the Androids showed up at the end of their 3 years. This is just sort of a precursor to it. If I find the time or inspiration, I will add to it.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to shoot me a review! :D


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